Spiritual Breakthrough

WHENEVER I see a picture of Dr. Albert Schweitzer I think of another doctor--our family physician when I was a child. He was the son of German immigrant parents and he had put himself through medical school. He sang a thunderous bass in the choir of his church for forty years. His mustache bristled with good humor; his laugh, on entering the house, was a rumble of reassurance. He could bring down my temperature just by sitting beside my bed and telling stories of his boyhood. When one of us was seriously ill, he would stand quietly in the sick room, the deep furrows of his face relaxed, his shaggy grey head bent. I know now that he was praying. Though he carried an astonishing array of medicines in two bulging leather bags, his chief remedy was Love; I suspect that he was really a faith healer with a medical degree. Looking back at the years of my childhood, I can recall only one adult who seemed to have a close, personal, never-failing trust in God: the old doctor.